Date of Report: February 14, 2010
Date of Incident: February 10, 2010
Initial Incident Reported: Assault
Reporting Agent: Got a Grip, cop on the beat
It was a day just like any other day in this sleepy little suburban neighborhood. The previous night had seen both the end of the latest snowstorm and the unique phenomenon of a ginormous earthquake which left much of the metropolitan area abuzz with excitement, but here in this lazy backwater things appeared quiet. As I ventured out on patrol I expected nothing more than a routine shift. But alas, it was not to be....
Agent Polly sent out an urgent call for back-up in the herb garden district.
Agent Polly: Highly respected and decorated officer on the force. Best known for her deep undercover operations.
Aliases on the Street: Pupperdo, Pupperdon't (used in an unsuccessful sting on Republican obstructionists), Pfefferneuse, Fluffernutter, Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day, Bonehead, Boneheadia, Stupid Fucking Dog.
Current Assignment: For the last several years, Agent Polly has been running a covert spying operation on the neighbors next door a suspected mob ring. While no evidence has been found to connect any individuals to organized crime, Agent Polly remains convinced that there is reason for suspicion. She continues to work her contact, Fredo, for any leads. Her infiltration scheme has worked well, and she is known throughout this suspicious network as Fifi, or Fredo's bitch.
While on her regular patrol, Agent Polly had come upon evidence of a grisly crime.
I immediately sent her off to keep her from stomping everything to smithereens canvas the other residents in the area and grabbed my forensic equipment.
Yes, someone had been stripped of their plumage attire. By isolating the attire in our first crime scene photo and adjusting for the poor light quality, our forensics lab concluded that the attire appeared to sport the gang colors of the local Dove clan.
We are awaiting official confirmation of this.
Aside from the scattering of attire over the entire area of the herb garden district, there was a remarkable lack of evidence. For instance, there were no footprints visible anywhere. Not the victim's, not those of innocent passersby, nothing. The only indentations to disturb the newly fallen snow were those made by "snowflops," a colloquial term for the snow that falls en masse from the branches of trees, leaving disturbances that look like a herd of winged unicorns have hovered over the snow, touching their hooves ever so lightly into the fragile, glimmering crystals, leaving the whisper of a hoofprint.
But after painstaking examination I finally came upon my first real clue.
Can you see what I see here? I thought not, so I've taken the liberty of having our forensic lab isolate the evidence and apply a variety of filters to enhance the image.
That, my friends, is NOT the ephemeral hoofprint of a flying unicorn. Even with the forensic enhancements you can't really get the sense of the size of these prints or a clear sense of their shape, so I'll give you my best eye-witness account. The print closest to the middle of the image is approximately 3 1/2 inches long and equally wide. The full weight was not born down on the snow, and there is a faint but distinct impression of partially extended talons in the bottom of the shallow trench. The upper imprint looks more like a heel print, or that of a closed "fist." The culprit did not place his/her feet down in the snow, in fact it looks as though they tried their best not to touch the snow at all. The perfect crime is not so perfect after all, it would seem.
But what was the exact nature of the crime? Obviously there had been a violent struggle, but there was nothing to indicate how it might have ended.
We had eyes in the sky....
....but they offered no enlightenment.
Finally, after an extensive search, our worst fears were finally confirmed.
A close up of the evidence shows blood traces on the attire itself, but none in/on the surrounding area, and no signs of the desperate struggle that must have ensued.
Meanwhile, Agent Polly stopped by the station to check in with the Chief, Captain Boy.
The news that one of the Dove gang had possibly been taken out left Captain Boy deeply jealous disturbed. Being confined to the office wears on the Chief, so fond is he of field work. He has a "take no prisoners" attitude when it comes to crime within his jurisdiction.
Agent Polly left their meeting with a hang-dog look, but headed out to see if she could get a line on the victim. She got lucky when one of her regular snitches, a ruffian who goes by the name of Toucie, proved to be a font of information. First, he pointed her in the general direction of recent Dove activity....
....and that led her to this multi-family, ethnically diverse mid-rise housing complex.
Agent Polly sniffed around....
....pumping the locals for information, but although the sounds of cooing and mourning could be heard from within, no one would talk. So Agent Polly went back to have another chat with Toucie, who once again proved his worth as an informant by pointing us to the area where several suspicious customers have been spotted.
At this point we went back to the office to get warm sort our evidence and see what we had. It was clear to the entire team that a murder had taken place, and that the unknown victim was probably a member of the Dove gang. The lack of foot prints in the area suggested an aerial assault and the partial set of prints that we did lift seemed to confirm that. The point of initial attack and the path of the carnage field indicated that the direction from which the assault was launched might indeed be where our snitch had pointed us, where this high-rise drifter's haunt....
....aligns with the archway that leads into the herb garden district.
Based on this information I pulled the files on three suspects that are known to frequent this area.
Suspect has been seen in this area on numerous occasions since this agent arrived in the area in 2006. Preys on members of the Rabbit gang and the Chipmunk gang throughout several jurisdictions. Usually launches his local attacks from the ancient weeping willow that towers over several districts in the yard four houses down from our local jurisdiction. Lives in the barn in the remnants of the old Farm district three blocks east. Last sighting in the area was one week ago.
Suspect has been seen in this area on numerous occasions since this agent arrived in the area in 2006. Preys on a variety of gangs including the Rabbit gang, the Chipmunk gang and all the gangs of the small bird communities. Launches his attacks from the above documented high-rise drifter's haunt. Residence unknown. Last sighting was mid-January.
Suspect has been seen in this area on numerous occasions since this agent arrived in the area in 2006. In fact, reporting agent (moi) has had several in-depth conversations with the suspect. He is brazen, turning to look you directly in the eye while conversing. Displays no fear when approached and seems even more inclined to converse. Preys almost entirely on the Rabbit gang. Launches his attacks from a mid-sized tree at the end of the cul-de-sac, about 30 yards to the left of the archway pictured above. Residence unknown. Last sighting was two days ago.
I was ready to get down to examining the suspects more closely, but something was nagging at me, something I couldn't put my finger on. I felt like there was something in those initial pictures that I was missing. I pulled all the images and went through them carefully. The lightbulb finally went on when I took another look at the very first image of the carnage, the one with the clump of tail feathers and a branch.
The day before the big snow, Agent Polly and I had stumbled upon a puzzling pile of short branches like the one in the picture. It was about an inch deep, covering the 4ft. X 2.5ft. area where the archway connects the herb garden with the backyard. I'd stopped to marvel at this strange pile. Had one of my neighbors trimmed my archway? If so, WTF? But I had an urgent appointment with the doctor and so I'd filed that tidbit in the back of my mind and forgotten about it. Now I'd remembered, and I grabbed my gloves, ran out to the archway and dug under the snowpack to see what was there. I found the specimens to be in excellent condition.
So let's take a close look at the cuts on these branches, shall we?
Look at the precision of those cuts, would ya'? That's impressive. For comparison, let's look at what a cut from the finest branch mangler that money can buy you at Menard's looks like.
I know that I made that cut, and squirrels don't usually take their material from this kind of tree, but I've seen branches of hardwoods that they've collected and they leave a gnawing cut not unlike what my branch mangler does. In fact, of all the sharp cutting implements that I have (and I have many) the only one that is capable of making a cut this precise and clean is my expensive cane cutters, which will cut through grapevine, oak or bamboo like butter. Only a razor-sharp precision tool will leave cuts like this.
So back to the archway we went. My original thought that someone had trimmed the archway was clearly incorrect, as I couldn't find anything within the sweep of the archway itself with those precision cuts. So the cutting was happening much higher up in the archway trees. Furthermore, the pile as I remembered it didn't have the appearance of randomness. It was as if they'd been dropped there as a storage spot, like maybe they were just waiting for someone to come back and get them. And when scanning upward through the archway trees I came upon a dark patch, an absence of light.
It was very hard to make out what the thing was from this angle and in this light, but we'd never seen anything like it before. Highly suspicious now, Agent Polly and I dug in and approached the tree from below, with backlighting from the thin sunshine (finally!), turned on the flash and....
Let's look at that thing without Agent Polly and the caption, shall we?
That wooden thing with the clump of snow on top in the lower right corner of the photo is the top of the dilapidated trellis frame that shapes the archway. It's about 7ft. high. The aerial construction site itself is another 8-10ft. above that, so let's say it's 15-20ft. off the ground. It's hard to get a shot of it that really gives you an idea of the height at which it rests and the dimension of it. At the time of this photo it was about 3 feet in diameter, but my inspection yesterday afternoon revealed that there appears to be yet more construction going on, with smaller extensions that have been added further out along the branches and ongoing work to fill the gaps between these extensions and the main construction zone.
This new discovery sent a chill through the ranks.
Captain Boy was very displeased with this new information.
We've catalogued the evidence and come to the following conclusions:
Taking advantage of the snowstorm, the earthquake and the ensuing havoc, there was an aerial assault resulting in the murder of a yet-to-be identified member of the Dove gang in the pre-dawn/dawn hours of Wednesday, February 10, 2010. Evidence collected at the scene indicates the assailant is a loner and may be in a class of predator known as raptor. An ongoing and unauthorized construction project is underway in the area immediately adjacent to the crime scene, but heavy surveillance has still not sighted the perpetrator(s).
If the construction project is connected to the murder, this rules the Barn Owl out as a suspect. Barn owls suck at nest construction and really like it best if you build them a nice barn with a tidy nesting box so they don't have to. If, on the other hand, the construction is NOT connected to the murder, the Barn Owl remains a suspect.
The gut feeling amongst the ranks is that the construction and the murder are connected. Agent Polly continues to nose around the area for witnesses within her jurisdiction....
....while keeping an ear cocked for leads from other quarters.
All our evidence is circumstantial, and narrowing down the suspects going forward will be tough without outside forensic assistance (YooHoo, Birders. Hellooooo....) and further clues. So without more to go on, I'm afraid that this case may end up....
....in the Cold Case File.